Koh Sang Woo is a pioneer of blue photography. This solo exhibition allows viewers to see all of Koh’s series, including the works he creates through meticulous planning. Koh’s process begins with thoroughly familiarizing himself with his models through contact with them over a long period of time, researching them, and spending sufficient time together with them. He then creates vivid images of these human figures, involving impromptu performance, painting, and photographic techniques with the use of object in a carefully arranged space. The images created by this process are finally completed as works of photography by reversing the colors and taking a negative of the exposure. The images and colors of Koh's works look very strange but are beautiful and mysterious. Such output is the result of many years of experience accumulated in an analogue way; it is not achieved easily by a digitalized process.
Negative exposures not only reverse color and light but our viewpoints and our way of thinking, as well as and the nature of subjects. While maintaining a contemplative attitude toward social conflict arising from differences in desire, sex, race, and culture, Koh intends to comment on these fundamental issues through the use of visual language.
It is difficult to define Koh Sang Woo as a photographer. His work involves all genres of art, and is completed through videos and performance, not to mention photography. Koh's explosive energy and creativity are too dynamic to be able to narrowly define his work within any one specific genre.

Soun Hong depicts landscapes from around the world, working from photos he plucks from the news rather than adhering to the conventions of landscape painting and sketching outdoors. To create his paintings, Hong first isolates the sections of images that surround the subject of a news story and then magnifies them so that they become meta-landscapes, which he calls “Sidescapes.” This exhibition, entitled ‘Sidescape,’ allows viewers to find meaning in the fragments of news photos painted by Hong and encourages us to look at the land and objects located just beyond the subjects of these photos from Hong’s unique perspective.
The artist has utilized the landscapes of tens of thousands of news photos, depicting them on canvases of various sizes in order to restrict his focus to the landscapes surrounding the reported events. In this way, he removes all traces of sociological and political interpretation imposed by the mass media, whereupon the conventional images characteristic of news photos are deconstructed and remade as wholly new landscapes.
In his “Sidescapes,” Hong visually disorients viewers through the use of ambiguous forms and colors, revealing the surrounding landscapes that made the image of the incident possible. These landscapes, existing though hitherto unseen, in turn serve to direct our thoughts toward other hidden parts of the world which can only be viewed through the eyes of a journalist.

kwonjungho is leading contemporary artist in Korea who invites viewers to rethink the essence of man and the means to resolve social problems through his diverse works. He has been well known as a painter in Korea since the 1980s, representing a group of new expressionists addressing the depths of human emotions and attitudes about death. For kwonjungho, death is the common destiny we must all deal with; it is the one thing that is slowly bringing the whole world together. In other words, he sees death as a state of being wherein the yardstick for measuring value in reality becomes meaningless, suggesting that absolute death should present a new vision rather than a complete end. He has recently manifested his theory about death by using a skull to symbolize his object and casting it with mulberry paper, a medium he frequently uses for expression. His act of creation embodies the reality of the matrix world along with a religious meditation on Korean aesthetics. This is just one of many different attempts to revive the spirit of Korean culture in a realistic manner, which has largely been forgotten. kwonjungho manifests his beliefs this extremely specific work process and its endless repetition, creating works which address phenomena such as social oppression, institutional contradiction, and the limits that man faces in modern society?all revealed through diverse artistic attempts based on condensed philosophical reasoning. Now he is garnering greater interest for his extraordinary works created in diverse mediums, among other things.
This exhibition explores the life and death of man, the relations between the individual and society, and between man and religion?all in the context of human nature. The roughly thirty works presented in this exhibition are larger, more elaborate, and of a higher degree of completion, compared with his previous works. Some are very recent. All show reality but are also meant to entertain viewers; that is, to be 'things enjoyable to see' while dealing with subjects which the artist considers very important. By invoking themes like 'social oppression' (manifested by tightly closed teeth and skull), 'story of grief' (depicting clamor through screaming victims and fragmented things), graffiti on smoldered walls, and 'accumulation of time' (which associates a relationship with religion by reminding us of the essence of man), kwonjungho suggests that mankind tends to express voyeuristic pleasure and resolution in the face of tragic reality, rather being shocked and feeling guilt. His works clearly express a feeling of relief due to the fact that their tragic story is about somebody else instead of the immediate self.
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"I produce personal works, but I am not a formalist. I create form within spirit, and do not lose spirit in form, says kwonjungho. “This is my philosophy, my belief, and my confidence." This statement formalizes the artist’s confession and condenses his thinking and accomplishments. His aesthetic flexibility can be understood through the diverse attempts he has made thus far. kwonjungho postulates his objets as images of communication embracing life and death, and expresses them as "a new horizon of the world opens with the cycle of life and death and on the foundation of the accumulation of such cycles."

‘A weight of Ideology_Mayday on’ is about a status that an individual takes in contemporary society pertaining to one’s regional, national, social, and cultural position. In this project, Kira KIM explores various historical events and human activities occurred in relation to irrational boundaries, social inequality and prejudice, hegemony, contradictions and icons in history, myth, and religion, and ideology. Though this exploration appears to be somewhat narrative or fairy tale like in general, his works are full of different signifiers of contemporary society by means of the window of humor and documentation. This is one side or social phenomenon of spectacle contemporary society, and fundamental contradictions and desires forming that society are recognized in this project.
Selected works
In featured four to six videos, drawings, and installations, Kira Kim metaphorically illustrates status quo of where he lives in at this time. For him, contemporary society is full of collisions and conflicts, resulting from regionalism within South Korea, division of Korean peninsula, right wing and left wing politics, a generation gap, and gender equality. This is a critical discourse of ‘here and now confront with emergency state’ upon which we must reflect. And this is what he is attempting to do through his work, questioning constant state of pressing situations.
‘A weight of Ideology_Mayday on’ is about a status that an individual takes in contemporary society pertaining to one’s regional, national, social, and cultural position. In this project, Kira KIM explores various historical events and human activities occurred in relation to irrational boundaries, social inequality and prejudice, hegemony, contradictions and icons in history, myth, and religion, and ideology. Though this exploration appears to be somewhat narrative or fairy tale like in general, his works are full of different signifiers of contemporary society by means of the window of humor and documentation. This is one side or social phenomenon of spectacle contemporary society, and fundamental contradictions and desires forming that society are recognized in this project.
Selected works
In featured four to six videos, drawings, and installations, Kira Kim metaphorically illustrates status quo of where he lives in at this time. For him, contemporary society is full of collisions and conflicts, resulting from regionalism within South Korea, division of Korean peninsula, right wing and left wing politics, a generation gap, and gender equality. This is a critical discourse of ‘here and now confront with emergency state’ upon which we must reflect. And this is what he is attempting to do through his work, questioning constant state of pressing situations.

Jongku Kim attempts to grate time itself in the works he presents in his exhibition ‘He-Story.’ Kim’s creations are extremely labor-intensive, executed by grating huge masses of iron into powder, which he then uses to make ink for his large-scale calligraphy works.
The transformation of iron during Kim's work process is not only physical; it also involves a profound transformation of meaning. Iron, as a symbol of the material civilization of modern times, is used here as a symbol of the human desire for constant progress. Here, iron is a skyscraper as well as a weapon that, in the blink of an eye, can destroy the civilization that has been built over centuries. By transforming solid iron into a fine powder, the artist removes its massiveness and aggression, allowing it to assume a physical form that is so delicate and impermanent that it can be altered even by the subtle movements of air. Kim compounds this minimal materiality by adding liquid to it, using it to create the ink he uses to paint. By producing calligraphy using iron powder, Kim creates works of fine art that imply an innate spirituality and, furthermore, realize complete dematerialization.
Kim calls his works landscapes; they become the points of departure for his personal monologue, one that asks questions of human nature. His calligraphy works using iron powder?that is, his landscapes?suggest that the process of sublimation and are the beginnings of a new breath which has been suppressed.

This exhibition features Nanda’s ‘The Day Series,’ a keyword of which is 'anniversary.' Through her photos centered around this keyword, Nanda sympathizes with the lives and the realities of people in this day and age who find themselves immersed in modern culture, visualizing fragments of modern society using her own acute viewpoint and unique sensibility.
Nanda's photos intend to interpret meanings and phenomena of various forms of anniversaries. To this end, Nanda collects photos of anniversaries by soliciting commissions from ordinary people through on-line social networks to photograph their anniversaries. She subsequently produces elaborate compositions by maximizing the dramatic elements of these anniversary photos, with the intention of revealing the truth of memories in our lives and the misguided desires of people living in modern society.
The elaborate photos of ‘The Day Series’?photos which capture events such as Children's Day, wedding anniversaries, Valentine's Day, and even Samgyeopsal Day (‘pork belly day’)?incisively suggest that anniversaries celebrated by modern people are in truth merely cultural phenomena which reflect the 'pathological substance of desire' deep inside every one of us.

The title of Suntag Noh’s exhibition may call to mind gentle and warm photographs of nature scenery. But for those who are familiar with his series might take this rather unusual as his practice is mostly on revealing and questioning unreasonable and irrational history prevalent in contemporary Korean society. The subjects of his photographs include division of South and North Korea, current political situations, or inconvenient truth, mischaracterizing him as a documentary photographer.
If see it close, however, Suntag Noh’s works are quite different from typical documentary photographs. Unlike documentary photographers, he stands back and never set forth his take on the situations so as to make viewers question and contemplate the situations in their own ways. As a result, his photographs are open to any interpretations of the viewers making the viewing process more complicated and varied. Besides, the situations in his photographs are not easy to get hold of right away.
The people wearing colored raincoat in the series “String-pulling theory; An excellent mystery of the Container-Barricades made by 2MegaByte” seem to be enjoying an outdoor performance on a hot summer day despite the rain but in reality, they are running away from the water cannon at the demonstration. And in the series “strAnge ball” that appear to depict typical landscape scenery, the bright moon like object is in fact a radome, a protective housing for a radar antenna. As it is in these cases, the first impression of his photograph is different from reality.
For this exhibition, photographs were selected not from one specific series but from various series in order to present how he perceives the ‘landscape’ of Korean society. Though it comes from the tragedy of national division which is in no what so ever way beautiful, the ironic title ‘so much beautiful’ is to say that we must embrace those landscapes of history and overcome through what he lays with his perspective.
This exhibition is in an attempt to give a chance to face up to the reality that we live in and see Suntag Noh’s photographs not only from protester’s view but from different angles.

‘Ligyung_More Light’ presented at Coreana Art Museum is organized to introduce the work of media artist Ligyung. Since 2000, Ligyung has focused her installation work on the philosophy concerning individual human beings and society by presenting a space of floating light. This exhibition features about thirty of her installations, including work from her earlier years as well as her most recent works shown at two exhibitions in 2012: ‘More Light’ and ‘I Am Telling a Lie.’ This exhibition, ‘Ligyung_More Light,’ focuses more directly on the tactile physical experience that can be felt in the limitless space of light rather than visual spectacle, suggesting connotations of light within installation works that envelop the entire space that can be seen and felt.
The concept of light has been a significant theme in Ligyung’s work, pervading her artistic voice and determination. Her work aims to reveal the visual limitations of the human eye, which believes all it sees to be real. Venturing into a space of light that seemingly has no beginning or end, viewers experience a sense of disconnected perception and cannot fix their eyes on anything in the limitless space. In do doing, viewers come to recognize the limitations of their eyes which cannot distinguish appearance from being, phenomena from existence, truth from fabrication, as well as the imperfections of the phenomenal world. Ligyung's works can be seen as representing the divisive situations of people today who cannot resolve the questions of where to go in our highly structured social system.
In this exhibition, Ligyung takes greater interest in phenomena that can be seen and felt here and now by the physical senses and invites viewers to experience what is close to them. She imparts new meaning to light in her works, light which does not exist merely as an invisible idea but assumes form in a concrete world and is connected to her perceptions of society and herself. Breaking away from the context of her previous work?which was based on an abstract and absolute concept of light?Ligyung suggests a concept of 'more light' which floats and varies in response to the movement of the body and associates itself with physical experience. The light that expands and floats boundlessly in the space within Ligyung's work is a metaphor for modern people and our invisible social system, embodied as a theme of expanded social horizons.

Sang-Mi Park uses ink and colors made from powdered stone. Although fewer and fewer Oriental painters are working with this medium, Park's work imparts a sense of modernity in its expression and sentiment which is comparable to that of Western painting. What is most notable about Park, however, is the deviant variability of her works. She considers perspective drawing composition?including the rules of close-range view and distant view?very important, and she makes bold attempts to create combinational compositions in intense colors. Interestingly, Park also tells stories in space by representing flowerpots, vases and plants as if they were trees. These kinds of subjects, though common in Oriental painting, are normally executed in Chinese ink; yet Park's canvases are filled with pigments and depict artificial objects and symbols of space. Whereas plants drawn with lines are seen as organic, two-dimensional spaces consisting of colors perceived as geometrical. Therefore, the conflicting and opposing elements of the plants and colored spaces in Park’s work are metaphorical and remind viewers of both tradition and modernity, East and West, reality and illusion. As the title of her online solo exhibition “Mise-en-scene” ("put in the scene") clearly implies, Park invents new spatial compositions within her works, the likes of which are subsequently transformed into components that are arranged within yet another space?known as the exhibition hall?with the intent of creating an overlapping structure.